Daily Archives: June 23, 2012

We all know that if it were not for the little kindnesses, the helping hands that we receive from those who touch our lives daily, we would fall more often and much harder. Yet, we must remember there comes a time when we cannot expect others to rush to our aid. It is then that we test the strength of our own self-reliance.

We should make every effort to be worthy of the concern and help of others. It is sharing all phases of life that make living more than just an existence. But none of us can support others for long who have no will to use their self-reliance. It is said that God helps those who help themselves, but even God cannot help where help is refused.

Then, how much can we depend on ourselves? How would we react to the same situations we see other people experiencing daily? We, who depend so much on our external advantages to pull us through, cannot truthfully foretell our actions in a crisis. But we can have a reserve of faith and strength behind us so that when others reach out to lift us up, we will be worthy of their time spent in helping to build our self-reliance.

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Available online! ‘Cherokee Feast of Days’
By Joyce Sequichie Hifler.

Visit her web site to purchase the wonderful books by Joyce as gifts for yourself or for loved ones……and also for those who don’t have access to the Internet:

“He [Wakan Tanka] walks with us along the pathways of Life, and He can do for us what we could never do on our own.”

–Fools Crow, LAKOTA

With the Creator in our lives, we are everything. Without the Creator, we are nothing. When the Creator is in our life, suddenly the impossible becomes possible. The extraordinary becomes ordinary. Things we thought could never happen start to happen. Talents we never know we had, start to blossom. Resources appear. Help arrives to give us guidance and direction. We become happy. We have peace of mind and confidence.

Oh Great Spirit, today I want You in my life. The days that I know You are with me are the days that are perfect. Let me be joyful today.

Attitude is everything if the day is to go well. If we require others to have patience with us and give us u we to li s di, the Cherokee word for pity or sympathy, then our minds are going to be on whether or not we get it, instead of on living well. We forget that we project to others how we want to be treated. Arrogance invites resistance. Hangdog attitudes invite other sour and sullen looks and behavior. Good-natured people are always welcome and give peace to our minds. Whatever we are about, it is to our advantage to know the world is reflecting back to us the mirror-image of pleasant manners – or the stern appearance of touch-me-not. It takes so little to relax and enjoy, so that others can do the same.

~ I am old, it is true; but not old enough to fail to see things as they are. ~

Saying Yes to the universe opens the gate to receiving what your soul really wants.

The hardest thing about saying yes to the universe is that it means accepting everything life puts in front of us. Most of us have a habit of going through our days saying no to the things we don’t like and yes to the things we do, and yet, everything we encounter is our life. We may be afraid that if we say yes to the things we don’t like, we will be stuck with them forever, but really, it is only through acknowledging the existence of what’s not working for us that we can begin the process of change. So saying yes doesn’t mean indiscriminately accepting things that don’t work for us. It means conversing with the universe, and starting the conversation with a very powerful word—yes.

When we say yes to the universe, we enter into a state of trust that whatever our situation is, we can work with it. We express confidence in ourselves, and the universe, and we also express a willingness to learn from whatever comes our way, rather than running and hiding when we don’t like what we see. The question we might ask ourselves is what it will take for us to get to the point of saying yes. For some of us, it takes coming up against something we can’t ignore, escape, or deny, and so we are left no choice but to say yes. For others, it just seems a natural progression of events that leads us to making the decision to say yes to life.

The first step to saying yes is realizing that in the end it is so much easier than the alternative. Once we understand this, we can begin examining the moments when we resist what is happening, and experiment with occasionally saying yes instead. It might be scary at first, and even painful at times, but if we continue to say yes to every moment through the process, we will discover the joy of being in a positive conversation with a force much bigger than ourselves.

Explanation: As seen from Frösön island in northern Sweden the Sun did set a day after the summer solstice. From that location below the arctic circle it settled slowly behind the northern horizon. During the sunset’s final minute, this remarkable sequence of 7 images follows the distorted edge of the solar disk as it just disappears against a distant tree line, capturing both a green and blue flash. Not a myth even in a land of runes, the colorful but ellusive glints are caused by atmospheric refraction enhanced by long, low, sight lines and strong atmospheric temperature gradients.

A two-fer from the world of fast food. Remarkably, both stories broke on the same day.

The first anecdote, supported by visual evidence, comes from Reddit user LinkBoyJT who writes, I was eating a hash brown from McDonald’s on the way home when I felt something on the bottom….”

The something turned out to be a cockroach. But it is what happened next that gives the tale its unique flavor. In an addendum to the original post, LinkBoyJT states:

I took the thing and showed it to the manager and she marked my receipt so I could get the same meal for free the next time I come in for breakfast. She didn’t really seem all that concerned. [Emphasis added]

The same meal? Does that mean he is going back? And if so, is it in an effort to see what prize turns up in his next order of hash browns?

Meanwhile TIME carries a story out of Jackson, Michigan that gives a new definition to finger sandwich. A 14-year-old sitting in a car in the parking lot of an Arby’s with his mother and her friend had just tucked into his roast beef sandwich when he came upon something that he said was rubbery and hard to chew. Removing the offending object from his mouth, he shouted out (ostensibly in the local vernacular), “That gots to be a finger.”

His mother, Jamie Vail, at first assumed he was clowning around. Then she got a look at the severed digit, which she described as about an inch long and between an eighth and a quarter of inch thick.

Sure enough, an employee during an earlier shift had cut her finger on a meat slicer. Jackson police and the Jackson County Health Department both had a record of the injury. A spokesman for the health department said that the injured employee had likely left her station and was replaced by other workers before anyone was wise to what had happened.

John Gray, vice president for corporate communications and public relations for the chain, released a statement reading in part:

Arby’s wants to reassure customers that we are committed to providing quality food in a safe and healthy environment. We are deeply concerned and apologetic to the guest involved in this unfortunate incident.

As for the teen, Vail told the website Michigan Live, “He hasn’t been able to sleep very good.” That’s entirely reasonable. Given what he’s been through, the child gots to be having nightmares.

A picture, it is said, is worth a thousand words. By that calculus the slideshow at the left is worth 11,000 words, though in truth no amount of verbiage quite does it justice.

The photos were shot by professional photographer Sally Davies. All, moreover, are of the same subject—namely, a McDonald’s Happy Meal that Davies purchased on April 26, 2010. She then placed the edible contents—a hamburger and fries—on her coffee table, uncovered.

For the next six months, Davies took daily snapshots of the still life presumably as a means of chronicling the ravages of time on unrefigerated, unprotected “fresh” food. The results speak for themselves.

Perhaps when the First Lady with the support of the USDA speaks of the need to nudge the public into make healthful food choices, they should instead direct them to pictures like these.

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